


144

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: AU, F/M, M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-30
Updated: 2011-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:16:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before "The Way Back," Blake falls victim to a honey trap</p>
            </blockquote>





	144

**First Quatrain**

"How could you--anyone--be so goddamn cynical," Travis asked, waving away the smoke from the thin, gold-tipped cigarette rolled in orchid paper.

Servalan upended the cigarette into the dregs of a glass of wine on the bedside table. It hissed and sizzled, resistant to the end. "I'm merely being realistic, Edward. Successful participation in a major undercover operation will be very good for your career. You know that it wasn't easy getting a commission for you. If you don't want to spend the rest of your life as a Second Lieutenant--or for that matter if you don't want to be sent where the life expectancy of a Second Lieutenant is well up there with a snowflake in Hell--a single snowflake without any others around it--you'll need your own initiative as well as your one influential friend."

"I'd have to be either a poofter or an actor to do what you want, and I'm neither."

"Oh, Travis," she said, saucer-eyed. "Don't try to kid a kidder, all right? We know things, and that is just the sort of thing that we know."

"I was a Guardsman, dammit. You know what they're like."

"Yes, it's sad that they have to take on....outside work...to supplement their pay. But did it ever occur to you that some of them signed on as leg-breakers or bouncers, and only some of them--some of you--made yourselves available?"

"But I'm not like that any more...I've changed...you more than anybody should know that...I don't want to be like that..."

"It's not up to you, is it?" Servalan spread her hand flat on Travis' chest, in prime debriefing position.

"Anyway, even if I still wanted that, I'd bloody well know not to do it now that I'm a serving officer..."

"'Offenses Against State Citizens Code, Chapter 144,'" Servalan recited. "'It shall be a Class Three Offense for an individual graded as human or humanoid under Chapter 3 of the Classification of State Citizens Code and reported as male on identification papers to engage in conduct with another such individual consisting of contact between the genitals of one individual and the genitals, ingestive, excretory, or manipulative organs of another, as defined by Chapter 619 of the Classification of State Citizens Code. Except where aggravating factors relating to force or lack of consent as defined by Chapter 144 Section 13(b)-(k) are present, both actors shall be equally culpable.'"

"I see you've got it memorized."

"Shall I refresh your memory of the Military Justice Code penalty for refusing a direct order from a superior officer?" She decided to ignore the look he shot her, which certainly counted as Dumb Insolence. "This is money for old rope, Travis. You're everything that Blake would want. How could he resist you? You're strong...masculine....a Gamma..."

"What's that got to do with anything?" Travis asked resentfully.

"Oh, he likes to feel that he can do something for his boys, beyond the obvious. You lucky thing, he'll take you round to concerts, the museums...quite an education. He's got no time at all for the Betas, as he told another agent provocateur. Nasty little counter-jumpers, he said. And as for a Delta, well, the gulf would be a little too wide, the sweat and dirt a little too real."

"I can't do it, Irene," Travis said. "I won't."

"Lie back and think of the Federation, Travis. That's an order." Servalan lit another cigarette and her eyes narrowed as the smoke stung them. "Unless you want to be a traitor like Pauline's precious son. Or a mutineer, that's worse than treason because your duty to serve as a soldier is even greater than an everyday citizen's duty of obedience."

"But what about us?"

"There isn't any us, Travis," said Servalan in her raisins-and-chocolate voice. "I've had you, and I'm done with you. At any rate, I've got a two-year posting at Staff College on Ruffalo, so you'd be getting the keys to the street in any event. I'm just giving you a goodbye present."

 **Second Quatrain**

"I can tell you come here often," Blake said, gazing admiringly at the dark young man's shoulders and arms, as revealed by the ribbed singlet on affectionate terms with his chest. "*I* certainly don't," Blake said, patting his own midriff.

"Dead boring, working out, innit?" the young man said, resentfully reverting to the accent he thought had been left far behind him. He had thought that bridging the immense gap between non-commissioned and officer status would change something fundamental. It was frequently made bitterly clear to him that he was a Temporary Gentleman at best. "But I say, it's worth it for the results."

"I'd have to agree, looking at you," Blake said. "Live around here?"

"Close-ish. Live with my Mum, though. I haven't got my own place."

"I have," Blake said.

"Want to spot for me?" the young man asked. "I'm doing bench presses next."

Travis lay down on the bench and slithered backward until he was supine, the shadow of the barbell falling across his chest. "I do three sets of eight," he said. Blake watched as the barbell rose and fell steadily, until Travis' breath deepened, his chest was slicked with sweat and the singlet clung in places.

When he finished, he didn't bother to wipe down the bench. Blake took a couple of plates off the barbell and started doing two sets of six. This time he managed to complete them, inspired by the landscape offered by Travis' observation post above Blake's head.

"I'm called Roj," Blake said.

"Travis."

With careful attention to detail, Travis had arranged (in exchange for twenty-five credits out of Regimental funds) for the showers to pack up just around the time Blake could be expected to have sketched through his workout.

Everyone in the locker room groaned. Blake (towel modestly tucked around his waist) looked at Travis (towel slung over his shoulder). "My place isn't much, but in all the time I've been living there," (Six years, four months, Travis could have recited from the dossier) "the water's always run," Blake said. "Why don't we have a drink and a bit of supper, then go over there to clean up? What's your local, by the way?"

"Phibian and Compasses."

"God, they pull the worst pint of bitter in the world there."

"Mine's gin and French, they do all right with that. And the pub grub's not bad."

Over two plates of spag bog and chips, they (mostly Blake) talked until the barmaid called Last Orders.

"I'm an engineer," Blake said.

"Machinist," Travis said. (They'd just mind-wiped one, so the information was readily available for installation.) "Over at Manorhurst Works."

"My flat's just a few streets from here," Blake said.

"D'you kiss?" Blake asked, inhaling a wonderful smell of sweat and leather jacket and after-shave from Travis' neck.

"Never have before," Travis said. "I'm not that sort."

"Good," Blake said. "Then it'll be something special. Just for us." He hung up his coat and then extended his hand for Travis' jacket. "Gin and orange do you? I've got a bit left at the bottom of a bottle of gin and some orange squash, but no vermouth."

 **Third Quatrain**

It was another of those improving evenings when Travis had to trail along to pretend not to know things (that quite often he didn't know anyway) so he could be taught them.

A lecture--a lecture!--about long-hair music. Travis sulked most of the way through it and all through supper and all the way back to Blake's flat. The lecture was actually not bad, and in fact Travis had heard a lot of the tunes before and it was sort of interesting to find out where they came from. No, the trouble was supper. The old Phib was supposed to be his fucking local, not Blake's, but when they got there it seemed that Blake knew half of them already and the other half were his best mates by the time they left.

A month later, Travis said it was his birthday. They went around to the well-bugged Security safe house that was supposed to be Travis' flat, and the Colonel who overdid the role of his kindly grey-haired Mum served them steak and kidney pie and apple crumble and custard (which, as the file said, was Blake's favorite pudding). No wonder she'd been hooted off the stage in her previous career. {{I'm only twenty-six, my mother couldn't have changed Methusaleh's nappies}} Travis thought.

Blake gave him a nicely wrapped bookdiskplaque, "Great Music of the Federated Worlds."

"We're not used to things like this," "Mum" said.

"Edward's a very intelligent young man," Blake said. "He deserves the opportunity to realize his full potential."

Colonel Annesley said, "Too good for the likes of us," as Travis winced. No doubt many a rebel had been, as it were, sucked into the vortex of treachery by a growing interest in the rights of rough trade. All Blake said was, "The Federation has something to offer all of its citizens," and you couldn't hang much of an indictment on that.

Then the three of them went to the Warg and Castle for a birthday drink, and everybody there fell in love with Blake too.

When they got back to Blake's flat, Blake gave Travis an ID bracelet, nice and heavy but plated, not gold all through. {{Well, fair dos,}} Travis thought, understanding why Blake would want to give something that held greater value to a sentimentalist than to a pawnbroker. {{He's an Alpha and a queer so he must be used to Gamma boyfriends who declare birthdays quarterly, like dividends.}}

Sometimes, when Travis was supposed to be working rotating shifts, he'd stay over at Blake's flat. Something about the situation bothered him. At first, he thought that he was embarrassed, afraid that someone would see him coming out of Blake's flat. But he was on assignment, after all.

Blake's flat was nicer than the Bachelor Officer Quarters where he'd otherwise be living. Then he realized that, although he was more than used to sleeping in barracks, he hadn't shared a bed since he and his brother Kevin had shared the bottom bunk.(Servalan always made damn sure that Travis was gone before she got out of the shower.)

In those days, Tommy slept in the top bunk; their sister Jane Ann had a cot on the other side of the room. The bed and the cot were separated by a rickety ancient bureau, painted red, with lots of mostly-scraped-off stickers. You could tell they were there but not what they were supposed to be. The drawers didn't quite close, but they wouldn't anyway, bulging with stuff for four kids. It was a two-up, two-down terrace house, made out of grey stone that drained the color out of everything to the point that Travis found the Federation's black uniform refreshingly crisp and elegant.

Blake's bed was hardly wider than that bunk, they had to sleep close enough that Travis felt that Blake was half-fucked already by the time they woke up.

"Baps," Travis murmured one morning. "That's what this reminds me of. I was the one Mam would send off to the bakery, because I'd run there and back, the others would just walk, so when I got them back they'd still be warm."

"I'm soft and floury, then?" Blake said. "True enough, I suppose."

"Think that if you like," Travis said, annoyed to have been misunderstood.

When Blake left for work first, that gave Travis ample opportunity to look around, copy documents from Blake's computer, and upload paper documents that were left lying about in a file cabinet with a patent disregard for security.  
Some of the flyers and Party manifestos sounded quite sensible, so Travis was careful merely to position them on the desk and not to look at them any more than necessary to make sure the images were in focus.

Sometimes, Travis would leave the flat early in the morning, seeing everything around him with new eyes. So he squinted in the sunlight, instead.

Blake gave Travis the keycode, so he could come and go as he liked ("Tell your Mum that growing lads need their freedom," Blake said.) Once, when Blake came home from a double shift, Travis was there, and he'd downloaded some recipes from the mess hall manual and scaled them down from 64 to two servings, so he heated up some Stew, Meat and Assorted Leguminous and Non-Leguminous Vegetables, Non-Commissioned Officers for the Use of.

Blake chased the last of the gravy with a slice of bread. Travis brought him a mug of tea. "You're a diamond, Edward," Blake said, happily leaning back in his chair.

And then, a month after Travis' supposed birthday, it was Blake's twenty-eighth birthday. Travis didn't buy him anything, so Blake said, "D'you know what I'd like, better than anything you could get from a shop?" and Travis' heart sank. "Turnabout is fair play," Blake said.

And Travis knew that if Servalan asked (the likelihood that she would, he rated somewhere between death and taxes) he'd say that yes, he complied, because he couldn't risk ruining the assignment if Blake gave him the elbow. (The imagined conversation always started out including the phrase "getting the push," but that just made it worse. He knew he couldn't lie to her.)

Travis didn't really believe that refusal would end the relationship, that wasn't Blake's way. Oh, he might go into a sulk if refused (he could pout for the Federation, at any distance). He'd come up with detailed arguments. Or one night they'd turn up at a lecture about the latest advances by Federation scientists, 82.3% of whom were on record that they'd rather have a prick up the arse than a winning Sweepstakes ticket....

But it was Blake's birthday, after all. And then all the furious unhurt, unhumiliated Travis could think of was a couple of statues from the museum he'd been dragged to. A centaur: two creatures but one thing. And a horse with huge, graceful wings. The beating of those wings, lifting them.

Travis longed avidly for the game to be over, the assignment to be wound up, while he still knew what he was. Finally, at long last, the call came.

"I've put in the papers for your promotion," Servalan said over the voice link. "We're closing down the operation, at the Freedom Party rally on Tuesday night, we'll pour cyanide on the whole wasp's nest."

"No," Travis said.

At the other end of the link, Servalan shuddered. She wasn't used to that tone of voice from Travis.

"You owe me," Travis said. "Take him on Monday. I want to be there."

 **Couplet**

"Oh, get some sleep," Roj murmured, "It's late, love."

Edward was wakeful, alert.

He'd left the door open, but they battered it down anyway. Oh-four hundred hours precisely.

Thank gods, Blake thought, now it's over and I don't have to worry any more. He just hoped they'd let him put some clothes on before they dragged him away. If they weren't going to shoot him on the spot...no, they probably weren't, that would be too fast and clean.

"Let him go," he told them, "He doesn't know anything about it. It's not his fault."

The three Troopers didn't listen, one of them handed a bundle to Travis, who was sitting up in bed, smirking. Then he saluted.

"We brought your uniform and your service weapon...*Space Captain*" and the smirk broadened to a smile as Travis started to dress.

That broke the statis surrounding Blake. He wrested away the service revolver from pile of clothing now stacked on the bed. He pumped bullets in the direction of the mouth that sneered but had once done other things, toward the arms that had held him with such strength and such tenderness.

Travis gave a satisfying scream that washed away all of Blake's fear. Perfect love drives out fear, but then so does revenge.

 _Two loves have I, of comfort and despair  
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;  
The better angel is a man right fair  
The worser spirit a woman colored ill._(Sonnet 144)


End file.
